Gay Life, Straight Work

by Donald West

  Friendship with Tom continued, but he was not keen to have much sexual contact and I did not press for it. As years went by, Pietro, partly due to work commitments, was not inclined to travel abroad and I would sometimes take Tom with me. Opportunities for this occurred when attending conferences abroad, after which I would extend my stay and have Tom join me.

  I tried to convince myself that I was doing good by giving Tom relief from a dreary round of poverty and unemployment and occasional dead-end jobs that never lasted, and giving him experiences he could not have had otherwise. It pleased me to watch his reactions. I recall his amazement on first landing in North Africa and his enjoyment at galloping along a beach in Tunisia on a hired horse. He had been used to horses in his youth in North Wales. He asked the owner the name of the horse and was told that it was not the custom to give their horses names. This intrigued him and the memory of the horse with no name stayed with him. He was uninhibited about contacting people and delighted when he was invited to a wedding in Turkey. His addiction to cannabis was a ready means of fraternisation with young Moroccans. My own reward was having a companion who readily participated in recruiting young Moroccans as tour guides who were happy to proffer the additional sexual services of themselves and their friends.

  Tom was usually unemployed when I asked him to accompany me on trips. On one occasion when he was working he negotiated the necessary leave time. We returned on the correct date, but instead of going home to prepare for return to work, to my disappointment, he got off the train at Earls Court, went back to his old haunts, and was inevitably dismissed. I realised then that I was powerless to change his ways and might even be helping to perpetuate them.

  From the mid-seventies onwards holidays with Pietro were usually spent with an affluent gay American couple from San Francisco, whom he had originally met though his lecturing work and with whom we both became firm friends. Together we took motor tours around California and neighbouring states and at times they crossed the Atlantic and we toured Europe and even Morocco together. On these occasions we were not sex tourists, we travelled as two separate couples, neither of whom were looking for sex elsewhere.

  The time came when Pietro was less and less inclined to travel, partly on account of his work commitments and partly because of increasingly poor health. With his agreement I continued to visit the States and would secretly arrange for Tom to go with me. The San Francisco couple liked having Tom to make up a social foursome, and they were content to keep the arrangement secret from Pietro, but the schemes to avoid discovery were to me a continuing worry and grief. I suspect that in the end he did sometimes know or guess, but had decided not to interfere.

  Tom died some years after Pietro, but they were years of sad invalidism. It was unsurprising, after a life of drinking and smoking, that he should begin to have liver and heart problems. For some time he had been complaining of chest pains and breathlessness, but his GP did not see fit to refer him for hospital examination. Then he developed a highly visible necrosis (black shrivelling) of the end of a finger, a sign of serious obstruction to the circulation of the arm. He got worse and worse and was confined to bed with weakness and breathlessness. As there was no home care, I paid for a stay in a nursing home. Seeing how ill he was, the doctor in charge sent him twice to the Accident and Emergency department of the local hospital, but twice he was returned without treatment because there was no referral letter from the GP. Tom, in desperation, discharged himself and went home in near collapse. A day or two later I went to see him to find him being carried out on a stretcher with the GP present. She said to me “You know he is very ill” – as if that had not been obvious for some time! In hospital he was in ventricular failure and had terrific oedematous swelling. With immediate skilled attention his life was saved, but he was left an invalid.

  On discharge from hospital Tom was too weak to walk and quite incapable of looking after himself. Although having no authority in the matter, not being next of kin, I took it upon myself to call upon the GP to ask if she would seek social services help. Her response was “Oh, he’s got AIDS hasn’t he?” In fact he had been tested and found negative during his hospitalisation. At this point, through my work with the Mental Health Act Commission, I was able to buttonhole the chief of social services and pass her a note describing Tom’s urgent needs. From then on he received the help he needed. I suspect the GP, an Asian lady, had some moral antipathy to dealing with a self-confessed former drug abuser. Incidentally, this same GP had had Bill, Tom’s friend and fellow lodger, as her patient. After a long period of complaining of chest pains and coughing, when she finally referred him to hospital his cancer was visible in a protruding rib tumour and he survived only a matter of weeks.

  In the years following, Tom was given suitable local authority accommodation and was able to live independently, aided by a motorised chair. One of the social workers became more of a friend than a professional, running errands and chatting with him beyond the call of duty. His new GP was sympathetic and not troubled by Tom’s former life style. I was able to make periodic visits and supply small comforts. Through some neighbouring contact he was able to obtain cannabis, which significantly eased his suffering. Unfortunately, with so much liver and cardiac damage, there followed an inevitable decline. I was obliged to take a pet dog he had acquired to an animal refuge when he could no longer cope with it. He had emergency admissions to hospital on several occasions, receiving impersonal attention for immediate problems, but returning no better. His final admission was to a different hospital where he received two months of terminal care. The nurses were attentive and friendly, his stay was tranquil and he enjoyed being visited. I saw him shortly before he died, but missed the actual last breath by an hour or so. His face looked haggard but relaxed.

  Tom had persistently refused to try to contact his wife, saying he hoped she and the child were in better circumstances than he could provide. During his initial hospital admission, when he was critically ill, I telephoned his mother. She seemed sceptical about my news and never visited and he made no further contact. I had met her and felt I should tell her of his death, but her phone was no longer in operation. There being no known next of kin the local authority arranged a funeral service attended only by myself and one old friend of Tom’s who drove 250 miles to be there.

  Both George and Tom, but especially the latter, had some sad experiences with the National Health Service. Unattractive or difficult characters, with nobody to agitate on their behalf, are at risk of failing to get all they need. However, along the way both encountered within the bureaucratic system some professionals who managed to add the humane touch that makes all the difference.

  One other more disastrous liaison deserves to be confessed. The doctor who introduced me to Tangier also introduced a Moroccan that he thought more reliable than most sex workers. Mohammed was a well-built young man in his early twenties, moderately fluent in English, French and Spanish. He often helped young friends to write begging letters to foreigners who had patronised them during visits to Morocco. He liked to bring friends along so we could both enjoy their sexual services. He presented himself as someone who did not ask for anything but was pleased to receive whatever gifts I might offer. He was a useful interpreter and companion on tours into the countryside, but he was not a licensed guide and we were liable to be questioned by police as to his reason for accompanying us.

  I fell for Mohammed in a big way. Like most of his kind his ambition was to be offered work abroad, without which he was not permitted to have a passport. I planned to rescue him from unemployment and prostitution by applying for a permit to bring him to England to work for us as a servant. Pietro agreed to this improbable scenario and it was understood that sexual relations with Mohammed would cease. From the moment he arrived troubles began. As soon as we gave him tasks to do he was anything but enthusiastic. It was clear that he had expected to continue his role as a holiday companion. Realising he was excluded from our intimate relationship he
became extremely jealous and sulky. Other oddities emerged. He expressed a pressing need for religious observance, so I took him to a nearby mosque, but he attended only once. He also professed an abhorrence of women, but while we were away and had left him in the Milton cottage, Mrs Smith, our loyal home help, was embarrassed to find him sleeping with the local publican’s wife. The doctor who had introduced Mohammed found him alternative employment with a gay British lawyer who had known him on visits to Morocco and thought he would be an asset. That plan did not work out either, for Mohammed became jealous of the lawyer’s partner and spent much of his time sulking and idling instead of working. After some further failures his work permit was withdrawn and he had to return to Morocco.

  That should have been the end, but I continued to hear from him as he soon wanted to return. When we acquired the tiny Sidi Hosni house we let him use it when we were not there and paid him a little to look after it. He resumed his role as a guide during holidays and was particularly co-operative on an occasion when I visited with Tom and our American friends in Pietro’s absence. Predictably, as I now realise, the arrangement did not work out in the long run. His drinking was out of control at times and he got into trouble with the police. Far from seeing to things like blocked drains or a leaking roof, he would let problems accumulate till we arrived and spent our holidays dealing with them. He would also cram relatives into the house, who had to be sent away when we arrived. More seriously, neighbours complained about drinking parties on the roof when we were not there.

  I still sympathised with Mohammed’s unhappy state of chronic unemployment and general dissatisfaction with life, but the situation with the house was becoming more troublesome than it was worth. We decided, as a generous good-bye gesture, to give him the house in the hope that he might make use of it by letting it to tourists. I had thought this would entail nothing more than signing it over, but Moroccan bureaucracy saw to it that the transaction cost more than the original purchase. Sadly, it was not long before Mohammed was caught smuggling cigarettes and had to surrender the house to avoid imprisonment.

  I kept in touch with Mohammed intermittently. He married and produced several children. The family stayed in poverty due to his drinking and continued dependence on pandering to tourists, which became less profitable with the disappearance of his physical attractiveness. He now professed a moralistic attitude, declaring that he would never let his boys go through the dreadful life he had had to lead. To that end he would not allow them to watch TV because of its sexual content. He had apparently forgotten how much he once enjoyed homosexual freedom. He brought along two sons to meet me. The younger, not old enough to appreciate the situation, was happy to talk and accept small gifts, but the elder could barely bring himself to utter a civil word.

  After a long interval, I revisited Morocco with my current partner and unwisely asked Mohammed to accompany us. His disgruntled demeanour and demands for money become unbearable and, for the first time, we parted in anger and although I have heard from him since contact has not been resumed.

  Infidelity Justified?

  Pietro always protested that he never had a sexual liaison elsewhere after meeting me, but that was not quite true. In the early Sixties he formed a close attachment to a musician who lived nearby. I raised no objection and in fact became friendly with the musician, who consented to give a piano recital at a party in my college in Cambridge. George attended, but he was moody and awkward and caused some embarrassment. I was hoping that Pietro’s new friendship might lead to tolerance of my own behaviour, but that was not to be. The three of us went on a holiday quite happily together to Morocco, but, tragically, that was the end of the affair. The musician had to leave for Switzerland to recruit a singer for an opera he was directing. En route back to England he was stricken with an ascending polyneuritis and became paralysed. When we got back he was in hospital on a respirator, unable to communicate save for eye signals. After a week or two in this awful state he died. His family, recognising the closeness of the attachment, placed Pietro with them in the leading car of the funeral cortege. I have often wondered whether our lives might have been happier if this friend had survived and Pietro had gone to live with him. After Pietro’s death I learned of flirtations he had with adult students, long after sex between us had ceased. I was relieved rather than hurt to discover that, in spite of his claim to the moral high ground, he could sometimes relax his principles.

  One’s own woes are apt to seem special, but in reality gay male relationships are often beset by the eternal conflict between the masculine drive towards variety and novelty in sexual experiences, popularly attributed to the innate requirements of the ‘selfish gene’, and the opposing ideal of absolute sexual fidelity. In the heyday of the gay liberation movement, it was often argued that gays had no business aping the rules of capitalist society that keep heterosexuals anchored to their nuclear families and ready victims to wage slavery. Free love was thought natural for gays, who did not necessarily want to live in couples or take on child-rearing responsibilities. The advent of AIDS and the dire risks attendant on indiscriminate promiscuity, and later the introduction of civil partnerships, with same sex couples acknowledging their responsibilities towards each other, it has become politically correct to emphasise the loving and faithful qualities of many gay relationships. Of course, there is no ‘one fits all’ recipe for happiness, but reflecting on couples I have known, I believe that a stable relationship in which partners can rely on each other for company, support and affection in a life organised together is highly desirable. I believe also that the mutually accepted availability of outside sexual contacts, the so-called open marriage, works well for many gay men, although this seems less important to lesbians. There is always a risk of an outside relationship that sets out as casual becoming so intense it causes a break-up of the partnership. In the heterosexual world marital infidelity often leads to a chronic wife plus mistress situation that ends either in divorce and disaster for the children or the dumping of an exploited mistress. The dissolution of a gay partnership, where children are not involved and each member has equal earning power, is arguably less traumatic than heterosexual divorce. The worst possible outcome, it seems to me, is chronic misery when neither party conforms to the other’s image of what a partnership should be.

  Demise of the Antiques Shop

  After starting work in Cambridge in 1960, the antiques shop carried on as before. Helped by the Institute opening a research office in Camberwell, I was able to spend some time during the week in London and, as soon as I acquired the cottage in Milton, Pietro would spend weekends with me in Cambridge. This meant much journeying to and fro. The shop business had always been an occupation rather than a truly profitable concern. I kept the account books and the miserly sum theoretically allocated to Pietro was not a living wage. This was no matter so long as we were living communally, but circumstances were changing. We were employing as a shop assistant, at a very modest wage, Mary, a New Zealand lady with a liking for ceramics. She became a close friend to us. Pietro conceived the idea of opening a branch of the business in Cambridge, where Mary had relatives, and making her a business partner. In Little Abington, near Cambridge, there was for sale an historic mediaeval building, Jeremiah’s Cottage, with legendary links with an historic highwayman of that name. It had been a pub and had a large garden attached. There was obvious potential for a country antiques centre. It was agreed that my nominal interest in the business would cease and, with the help of a loan from me, Mary would buy Jeremiah’s Cottage, make it her home and accommodate within it a branch of the antiques shop.

  Pietro had no experience of business finance and, despite his sometimes brusque mannerisms, no assertiveness in relations with women. Mary, a convent-reared devout Catholic, was shocked when we told her we had been to see the Orton play Entertaining Mr Sloane. Somehow she managed to ignore, or not see, that we were gay. She had strong ideas about borrowing (except borrowing to purchase a home) and disliked
the fact that the business was run on a small overdraft that I had previously guaranteed. She insisted on selling off stock until the overdraft was eliminated, which severely restricted further purchases. Moreover, having acquired a potentially attractive garden, and being the keen gardener that she was, the shop got less attention than Pietro had envisaged and visiting dealers received less hospitality. The business went swiftly downhill and had to close. Mary sold the building at profit, paid off my loan, and returned to New Zealand. We sold off the stock and rented out the shop space in London. Pietro would have loved to be a collector rather than a dealer and we took the opportunity of the sell-out to hoard a few things for ourselves. A decade after Pietro’s death, when the Institute of Criminology published a fiftieth anniversary commemorative book, it included a picture of me accompanied by some Staffordshire pottery figures, remnants of Pietro’s collection. I believe Mary never appreciated her contribution to the collapse of the business. She was genuinely fond of us and, years after Pietro’s death, she continued to write to me remembering our happy times working together.